Guest Artist

Above - Maya Louise Sams with her chalk rendering of her house!

Above - the neighborhood hospital just up on the corner. Maya and CJ were born there, and Grandpa Don had his cancer zapped there too!

Above - Mom, and some butterflies!

Great old cars (and trucks)

Saw these two in the same morning!

Above - a 1936 Chevy pick-up truck? --- picture snapped out of my window as I drove through the intersection of Goodman and Monroe (Rochester, NY) (Talk about distracted driving!) Dad thought it was a 32, or 34 Chevy, but it turned out to be 1936. The Chevy logo on the side of the hood turns out to be the clue. We thought it was probably something added later, but I found a picture of a 1936 with the logo on the side..... problem is the fenders/running board arrangement doesn't look right? Any experts out there???

Below - a 1974 Rolls Royce with right side drive.
This one was in the parking lot at the Price Rite grocery store.
Their slogan
Impossibly, Incredibly, Inconceivably Low Prices Everyday
What was a Rolls Royce doing there?
And there was a Mercedes parked next to me when I arrived - no picture of that.
Maybe cheap groceries is how they stay rich, but it hasn't worked for me yet!

Vintage Louise's Daughter

Below are four figures we haven't made in a while.

The series was called "Movers and Shakers" - inspired by famous dancers.
This series included Steve, Judith, and Geoffrey shown below in that order.
In addition we did Carmen shown at the bottom in an older photograph (on a stand in those days) - we don't seem to have any of our Carmen figures around to photograph.

Steve

Judith

Geoffrey
Older photo of Carmen figure on a stand above.

Number Seven Hundred and Fifty

This is my 750th post!

This is also my 60th daily post in a row!
(Someday soon I'm going to skip a day just to relieve the pressure)
Both are sort of cool milestones!
The pictures below represent some of the things I most like to blog about.

Below - NITBY - Nature in the back yard - in this case a snail on a grape leaf in our yard.

Below - general silliness and/or things than make you go UUUUUMMMM!

Below - my grandaughter Maya Louise Sams,

and in the background my wonderful Cheryl!

Below - the ever wonderful and fascinating Caesar James "CJ" Sams

Below - another thing that makes you smile and go uuuuuuummmm!

A yellow submarine tea "ball".

And once in a while I throw in something about our business ventures
and the wonderful things we make and try to sell!

Thank you to all the folks who regularly check out my postings,
and to the people who just sort of stumble by and move on.

Not your usual Diner placemat!

Pretty much every Saturday after Dad does his grocery shopping and Mom and I go for a ride, we stop off at the Country Club Diner across from the grocery store, and have lunch. This time Dad's coffee came in this advertising mug. I think we have all been to a diner where the paper place mat advertises local businesses, but this is the first time I've seen an advertising mug! Turns out the restaurant gets 21 dozen free mugs for a year. Repeat business is pretty much guaranteed because the company takes back the mugs at the end of the year - presumably replacing them with new ones. The advertisers get a full year of advertising for about $200 - I assume depending on the size of the ad.

I usually don't promote anybody but us, but this seems kind of cool. They also do drinking glasses, beer steins, etc!

Your chance to get free mugs, advertise on mugs, or become a sales rep!

1911 postcard from Prattsburgh, NY

Found on E-bay.

Prattsburgh is near Naples, NY - my ancestral home. Parents, grandparents, etc all lived around this area.

Prattsburgh, NY is about 300 miles from the nearest beach - with sea shells and a boardwalk - today, and was probably a similar distance from the beach in 1911!

The Finger Lakes are near-by, but while the water and shore are great, very little sandy beach area, definitely no sea shells, and outside of a long dock, no boardwalk!

Batch of Airplane Balancing Acts

While making a batch of Balancing Acts today I grabbed these pictures of our Airplane Balancing Acts sitting on my rather messy bench!

Video below.

Ever wonder how we get rectangular boards out of round logs?

Oddly, this oddly lovely sculpture of a log cut into lumber, is made of plastic resin material!

Found out there on the web, but I can't find the name of the sculptor!

Nimbus - Large spinning top!

This is Nimbus! Made by Chris Neff, and won by me in a raffle we held on our Spinning top forum to raise money to send one of our members on a trip to promote top spinning!

I'm not a skilled person with these large tops, and I had to throw the top and then go grab the camera to get a shot. Some more practice will get me a nice vertical spin, but I sort of like these shots. Much thanks to Chris for a great top that spins very smoothly, and is a joy to own! After a few throws in the back yard, I packed it up and sent it off to my friend Mike Hout, who is hosting The 12th Annual Whirled Festival of Tops this weekend in Miamisburg, Ohio! Nimbus will be spun this weekend by some of the best top spinners anywhere, and will come back home later with many stories to share with me!

Below is Chris Neff, maker of this top, and a much better top spinner than me!

Video of Chris Neff working this top the proper way!

Deviation!

Enough said!

Guest Photographer

I don't often have a guest photographer, but this young lady got some surprisingly good shots, despite Grandpa's nervousness as she wandered about with his camera!

Wedgestock 2011

We love our neighborhood, and we love Wedgestock. Above - our booth yesterday on a perfectly sunny and warm but slightly breezy day! The event is more of a neighborhood celebration than a sales opportunity, but we're used to that, and this one was a celebration of our own neighborhood! We live in the South Wedge, and actually found it was closer to walk home to use the bathroom than to make our way to the festival facilities down the block! That's Rick Shannon, our friend and South Wedge neighbor, with Cheryl in front of the booth.

These views are all from or in our booth. Above and below - in addition to the usual variety of great dogs, an Alpaca and a few chickens participated in the Pet Parade that opened the day!

Below - I loved the front of the building across the street from our booth. Those windows overlooking the street activities must make for an almost perfect apartment!I also loved the view below from inside our booth down between the rows of the big craft tent next to us! Craft fair booths are often surprisingly isolating, with walls blocking us off from our neighbors. Here, our booth was actually the main entrance and exit for several of our neighbors when they needed to go get food or whatever. It was all very friendly and pleasant!

Below, our grandchildren - also South Wedge neighbors - visited, and made a game out of marching around one of our pedestals. After attending a parade earlier in the day, marching and drumming were a major theme for the day! CJ made good use of Grandpa's cane!

Maya has already announced that on Wednesday (our babysitting day) we are going to have an Art Show at the house!

Cicada!

Maya found this and was somewhat startled, but fascinated by this cicada on a tree in the park. Grandpa had previously brought over a cicada larva skin, and a dead adult, and I had explained about the connection between these and the buzzing high in the July and August trees!

While we were examining this new find, I reminded her of our previous talk, and commented that "this one is alive". After a fairly long pause ---- "How do you know it is alive? It isn't moving." The answer remains a mystery because after some thought I decided it was not a good lesson to poke it to make it move ---- ???????

Previous cicada entries ....
July 1, 2010


July 13, 2010

Maya's Name in Trees!

While on a walk to the nearby park the other day, Maya and I spent some time sitting on this huge "swing". At one point Maya pointed out that the ends of the swing support form perfect letter "A"'s!
This got her thinking of course, and soon she had spotted the letter "Y" in a nearby tree!

Grandpa and Maya were then on a quest for an "M", and Grandpa noticed that with a
180 degree flip, another nearby tree could make a perfectly passable "M"!

Below, I've created a little collage of the 4 images, plus an image from the playground a couple of weeks ago. We'll frame it for her --- now for a quest for "CJ"!

Anne's Garden

As long as I've known her, my sister-in-law Anne has had a love affair with gourds, pumpkins, squash, and melons! So naturally, given a huge back yard, she planted about half of it to her viney friends!

Above - the long view - doesn't look too exciting - lots of great looking healthy vines, but you need to follow Anne around the patch, stepping over and around those vines to where she separates the leaves to reveal!
Anne knows the names of everything - I've forgotten, but they sure look enticing!

I can't wait for Thanksgiving in Cohocton!

Anne's comments below tell the names of these beauties!

This one - above - looks like the perfect Halloween pumpkin?

Been wanting to share this for a while!

This is not always easy to do,
but it seems to be always worth thinking about
for a while at least.

It seems like the middle vertical line at the bottom
is the toughest.

Aunt Theresa

Ingleside Christian Church was a big part of my childhood! Aunt Theresa Drake (married to my Grandpa Drake's brother Delmar) was a big part of my childhood. Quite a few summers included a week staying with my cousin Leslie Drake and the rest of the family. Aunt Theresa, Uncle Delmar, Leslie, Lyle, Lindy, Cloyse, and Claire. We would usually be at church about 3 times during the week - sometimes more. Sunday morning, Sunday afternoon sometimes, Wednesday Prayer Meeting, etc. My father's parents were also members, so the week spent at their house each summer would also include several sessions at Ingleside Christian Church! Rev. Millard - above - was the preacher then, and Sunday, when we all gathered back at the church to celebrate the life of my Aunt Theresa! Not at all to my surprise, I learned that Aunt Theresa was just as important to pretty much everyone in the community as she was to me!

Lisle shares some of his mother above - Lindy below.

Cloyse reminisces below.

Below - Gerry Slayton - my Mom's best friend from childhood!

Cousins and old friends beyond count, and many many memories.
Mom and Dad made it there with me too!
The flooded basement of my return home could not possibly dampen the joy of this day of remembering!